Drones

FlexiQuad Drone From ETH Zurich Survives Collisions and Still Flies at High Speed

By Jackson Chung November 6, 2026

Luca Girardi and Stefano Mintchev spent years at ETH Zurich’s Environmental Robotics Lab refining a four-rotor drone that looks more like a bright orange ring than a conventional flying machine. Rotors, batteries, and the flight controller sit evenly spaced around that soft loop, with nothing in the middle. When the prototype hits an obstacle the frame gives way sideways, soaking up energy before springing back. Vertical stiffness stays high enough that the motors still push the craft through the air without losing control.

DJI Matrice 5T Drone Brings Compact LiDAR and Native 1K Thermal to Industrial Missions

By Jackson Chung November 5, 2026

DJI released the Matrice 5T this week as a folding enterprise aircraft that carries a native 1280 by 1024 thermal camera, a rotating LiDAR unit, and millimeter-wave radar in an airframe rated IP55. The combination supports missions in low light, rain, fog, or dust where earlier compact models relied mainly on cameras. With a battery installed the aircraft weighs 2,239 grams and folds to 335 by 155 by 203 millimeters, so it still fits in a vehicle or case while adding roughly a kilogram of mass over the Matrice 4T.

Insta360’s Antigravity A1 Follow Me Bundle Puts Reliable Tracking and Gesture Controls on Your Wrist

By Jackson Chung October 20, 2026

Antigravity released the Follow Me Bundle for its A1 drone, pairing the existing 8K 360 aircraft with a Watch Remote, Ring Remote, and full-coverage propeller guards. Complete kits that include the drone list for $799 through the company website and selected Best Buy locations, cutting the previous entry price in half, while the accessory kit alone costs $340 or $272 for people who already own an A1.

This Compact Single Propeller Drone Hovers Using Just One Motor

By Jackson Chung October 17, 2026

Joshua Bird set out to build a flying drone small enough to fit comfortably in a room without the bulk that usually comes with single-rotor designs. Most approaches either rely on a second rotor for balance or force the machine to grow large so its blades can produce usable control forces. He wanted neither, so he kept the hardware to one motor and one propeller sitting on a compact finned body, then solved the control problem through rapid changes in blade angle instead of extra hardware.

Bio-Inspired Whiskers Enable Tiny Flying Drones to Navigate and Explore Total Darkness by Touch

By Jackson Chung October 14, 2026

Rats and mice move through pitch-black burrows and narrow tunnels by brushing long, sensitive whiskers against nearby surfaces. Those same whiskers detect contact forces with almost no pressure, letting the animals build a mental map of walls, corners and openings without ever relying on sight. Researchers at Delft University of Technology have now translated that approach to a palm-sized flying robot, mounting a pair of artificial whiskers on a Crazyflie drone that weighs roughly 44 grams once the sensors are added.

AVIDrone Electric Helicopter Wins DARPA Lift Challenge Carrying Nearly Four Times Its Weight

By Jackson Chung October 12, 2026

An electric helicopter built by a small team in Columbia, Maryland, flew away with first place in the DARPA Lift Challenge after hauling a load of cast iron that weighed nearly four times the aircraft itself. The machine, called Katana, finished its winning run in just over nineteen minutes at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Judges measured an empty weight of 29.3 pounds and a payload of 112.4 pounds, producing a ratio of 3.84 to 1. No entry cleared the official four-to-one mark that would have unlocked the full prize amounts, so the top check was cut to $1.25 million. Still, the result set the highest completed score of the week and left every other finished aircraft behind.

MIT’s SANDO Keeps Drones on Safe Paths by Planning Around Moving Obstacles in Unknown Spaces

By Jackson Chung October 11, 2026

Drones flying search and rescue missions or package runs through crowded neighborhoods regularly encounter objects that move without any advance notice. A new planning system from MIT called SANDO addresses that problem by generating flight paths that stay collision free even when the area has no prior map and obstacles can shift position at any moment.

DoorDash Air Drone Lifts Ordinary Restaurant Orders Over Northern California Streets

By Jackson Chung September 30, 2026

DoorDash spent years watching other companies fly food, then decided the aircraft should come last. On September 30, 2026, at its Dash Forward event, the company showed DoorDash Air, a six-propeller drone it designed and assembles in San Francisco, paired with kitchen loading gear and software that already sorts millions of orders a day. Early pilot flights are set for Northern California in the coming months, with reporting pointing to the East Bay. Chipotle, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, and the local shop Momo N Curry are the first restaurants signed on.

TU Delft Bird Drone Feels Its Way Onto Branches and Rests Quietly

By Jackson Chung September 26, 2026

Photo credit: TU Delft
Forest monitoring usually means a small quadcopter hanging in place while its motors chew through a battery in a few dozen minutes. Noise follows the same schedule. A machine that can grab a branch and cut power would last far longer and bother far fewer animals, yet the last few inches of that landing have wrecked plenty of earlier designs.

QUADMOVR Flies a Carbon Quadcopter Drone on Four Printed Radial Impellers

By Jackson Chung September 21, 2026

QUADMOVR is no stranger to designing, printing, and flying self-built quads, and their latest experiment swaps every propeller for a 3D printed centrifugal wheel that lives inside its own vaned case. Each unit starts as a 60 mm PETG impeller that bolts to a standard T-mount motor with two M2 screws. A matching 90 mm housing, 28 mm tall, sandwiches between the motor and the carbon arm so the spinning wheel sits inside a 0.3 mm gap. Air enters through the open center on top. Curved vanes fling it outward the way a shop blower does. Fixed vanes in the case then turn that radial blast downward, which is how four of these assemblies lift a plain movr200cp2 X frame.